Lightning Field
by Eponymous Rose
Summary: Set between the flashback sequences of seasons 9 and 10. A mission gone wrong leaves Project Freelancer fragmented and left for dead behind enemy lines.
1. Current

**I. Current**

It was raining.

That seemed odd, but Carolina was cold and her limbs were heavy, and she could feel the water trickling down her closed eyelids, and so she drifted, and so she remembered. Warm rain on a cool night, the eaves filling to overflowing, the trees swaying in the wind, thunder rumbling slowly, building, building, her fingers clenching deep into the blankets, pulling them over her head, but not afraid. Never afraid.

There was something loud, something that rumbled and kept rumbling, and above it all a high, tinny sound, like a siren wailing in the distance.

She opened her eyes. It seemed to take a long time. Words flickered in front of her like ghosts. When she looked past them, she saw only darkness.

The alarm sharpened. The words focused. _Armor integrity compromised._

She inhaled—one short, sharp, waking gasp—and the water bubbled around her face, sluiced down her throat. Coughing, she shifted her sluggish limbs, found the right arm wouldn't move the way she wanted, felt a dull hint of pain beyond the numbing chill, then activated her speed unit, kicking out faster and faster and faster.

And then she was breaking the surface, dragging off her helmet, gasping and coughing and retching. The wind-lashed waves drove themselves into her again and again, the relentless rain streaking down in sheets, the darkness lit only by eerie flashes of lightning. She managed to keep her head above water when the next wave broke, but her shoulder was stiff and burning and she floundered under the wave that followed, sucking in a mouthful of water and choking it back up.

She thought, briefly, about what it would mean for her to die here, out in the chaos of the water and the wind.

She felt hot and feverish, a sure sign that her speed unit was seriously taxing her metabolism. She was hungry, and everything was too bright and too loud. One more wave drove her under, and this time she cranked up the speed unit, striking off in a direction chosen at random. If she was going to die, she might as well do it trying to save herself.

Her heartbeat was slamming in her ears by the time she reached the shore, her legs churning uselessly in the sand until she remembered it was okay, she could collapse, she could just fall and keep falling. Everything faded.

Lightning flashed, and the thunder made her chest ache.

She dragged herself back to consciousness half-curled in the sand, shaking, waves lapping hungrily at her feet. _The mission_, she thought, experimentally, and then with a little more emphasis, _The mission!_

She rolled to her feet, belatedly fumbling for a weapon that had been lost in the struggle against the waves. Standing didn't seem like a terrible idea until the dizziness hit her head-on, and she staggered, kicking up sand. There was blood in the sand, she realized hazily, and touched her right shoulder. Her fingers came away red.

She remembered the shot, the Insurrectionist sniper, and with the memory came pain, and that was all right, she thought, gritting her teeth. She knew pain. She knew how to deal with pain.

When she shifted the shoulder experimentally, the feeling of grinding bone immediately made her lose her gnawing appetite. She moved quickly and efficiently, locking down the affected area of the armor to immobilize her shoulder, sterilizing and numbing the wound, applying the biofoam. The pain faded, and she hissed a long breath.

The rain was letting up. She stared into the sky, blinking away the water in her eyes, then thought, _forward_, and matched thought to action, stumbling but surer with each step. She couldn't find her helmet, couldn't think where she'd left it—in the water, probably, somewhere during the desperate struggle for air. She'd have to go back for it at some point.

There was a burned-out shell of a Hornet along the shore, and she watched it warily until she was sure the only movement was the slow sway of debris in the wind, until she was sure the only light was a reflection of the slow, dying flickers of lightning along the horizon.

A body was face-down in the shallow water, drifting slowly in time with the driving and receding waves.

She moved closer, then stopped, because it was familiar armor and because she couldn't quite make out the color and because she didn't want to know, not really. She swallowed, hard, then moved forward again. She knew what it would mean not to say goodbye.

She crouched next to the armor, and this close, with the thinning clouds letting some light through overhead, she could see grey and yellow, and she exhaled slowly. Gently, carefully, she rolled Wash onto his back.

He'd taken a bad hit during the explosion—he'd been closest because he'd caused it, locking down the Hornet's systems with his EMP but not anticipating the cooked grenade the pilot was preparing to throw when everything started going to hell. The deep slash across his chest had to have been caused by debris, and the hollow in the sand where his body had been was streaked through with blood. He was limp and still, and without her HUD she couldn't tell if he was alive.

"Wash?" she said, and her voice shook, which was stupid, it was stupid and childish, but all she could think was that if he was dead she'd have to leave him and stumble back to the scene of the fight, and what if four other bodies were out there waiting, what if this was all that was left of her team?

She released the seals on Wash's helmet—his suit appeared to have fared slightly better than hers, keeping the water away from his head. His face was tense, his brow furrowed. She could see immediately that he was breathing, and for a moment the relief was so strong that she nearly collapsed all over again.

The moment passed. Something was moving over by the Hornet, a flicker of activity that kept drawing her eye, too often to be some harmless motion of debris. On any other day, she would've felt confident enough with her fists and her feet, but with one arm out of commission and her lungs still burning and her heart still pounding, she reached for Wash's Magnum and brought it to bear. She didn't make a particularly imposing figure, still crouched in the sand, but she wasn't entirely sure she'd be able to make it back to her feet without crumpling.

"Hey," she shouted, and her voice was hoarse and strange in her ears, but she was so tired, she was _so tired_. "I see you over there."

"Holy shit, you're alive." A figure stumbled out from behind the wreckage of the Hornet, empty hands palm-up, and Carolina squinted for a moment before she recognized the color of the armor in the faint light.

"South?" She relaxed her grip on the pistol, lowering it to her side as South jogged closer. Scorch-marks scuffed her armor and one arm was guarding her side, but she was alive.

South crouched down next to her, reached out awkwardly to steady her when she swayed. "Fuck, I saw you hit the water after the explosion. You didn't come up again," she said, her voice a little too high and quick. Her attention snapped to Wash. "And this guy's gotta have some sort of fucked-up guardian angel thing going on, I mean, I saw him get slashed by a piece of the Hornet. He was _down_."

"South," Carolina said, and South's attention snapped to her sharply, abruptly, and the overwhelming relief started to fade, because nobody else was running out to meet them, and South was definitely rambling, nervous and shocky. "It's okay. I need you to focus right now. What happened here? Where are the others?" _The mission_, her mind murmured. "Did the leader get away?"

South raised a hand to her forehead, like she'd forgotten the helmet in her way. "I think I hit my head, boss," she said, in a small voice. "There was a blast, and I saw you and Wash get taken out, and there was some asshole with a grenade launcher, and I think I hit my head."

_Focus_. "Where's your brother, South?"

South exhaled, staring down at the sand for a long moment, then looked up. "I don't know. North was— I know York was hurt. He got, he got distracted by the explosion I guess. I saw him get stabbed, but he was still moving around, you know? Connie was in the middle of things, setting up shots for North, I think." She tilted her head to the side, like she was half-expecting them to come up beside her. "I looked around for a while after I woke up, but I didn't see them. No bodies or anything. Our orbital link's down, too. Jammed, maybe."

Carolina breathed slowly, tried not to think about what might've happened if South had managed to reach the _Mother of Invention_. Would the Director have sent a rescue team? Would he have sent Tex? Or would he have cut his losses and moved on, away from his failed experiments?

"Fuck," South said, and grabbed Carolina's arm when she started a slow slump toward the sand. "You're not okay, are you?"

"Sniper shot, right shoulder," Carolina said, and hell, it was really starting to hurt again now that she'd mentioned it.

She must have started falling again, because South's grip on her arm tightened. "Jesus. Was that before or after you got exploded into the ocean?"

Carolina thought about it, because everything might have gone a little hazy but she was still clear-headed enough to remember that words were important, precision was vital. "Before," she said, calmly and clearly, and pitched forward into unconsciousness.


	2. Shockwave

**II. Shockwave **

Okay. So there were shitty days, there were _beyond_ shitty days, and then there was today, which was so far beyond shitty that it rated a whole new set of descriptors. York kept his eyes tightly closed and tried to think of words that would accurately convey the level of shittiness he was working with here, but he was kinda coming up empty. Maybe that was the sort of thing the new AI unit would do for him, once he got implanted. That might actually be cool. And, y'know. Less terrifying than the rest of the whole sharing-your-brain-with-a-computer thing.

"Hey," North whispered, and York felt more than heard the gentle tap against his helmet's faceplate, "you still alive in there?"

York opened his good eye, squinting at the HUD readouts currently flashing their disapproval at him for losing so much blood. His healing unit was doing pretty well at keeping him stable, which was great and all, but the damn thing always made his head ache, and right now he would've much rather had another nice, pain-free bout of unconsciousness than the mother of all migraines.

"York?"

Oh man, that was North's Concerned Voice about to go nuclear, and nothing good ever happened after that, so York raised a hand and said, "I'm okay, man, I'm okay. Just resting my eyes." His voice was raspy, but at least it had stopped that awful wheeze. Breathing also didn't hurt nearly as much as it had, but maybe that was just because the headache hurt that much more. The distinction seemed pretty unimportant, all things considered.

North let out a long breath. "Don't do that to me," he said, voice low and shaky. "We've lost enough-" And then he stopped talking, because by unspoken agreement none of them had mentioned it until now, nobody had broached the subject, because there were things you just didn't talk about, okay, there were things like the way the Hornet's explosion had sent echoing reverberations through York's chest, the way Wash had just _crumpled_ with a spray of blood, the way South's body had hit the wall with a sickening crunch, the way Carolina had tumbled into the crashing waves...

"They're okay," York said, a little too loudly. "We did the right thing. We had to make a choice. We had to move before these assholes could run again. This might be our only chance to get this guy."

North looked uncharacteristically sharp-edged, just for a moment, his hands clenching into fists, his shoulders tensing, and he said, in a voice that was soft and mild and sent chills racing down York's spine, "That was my little sister we left back there, York."

"Yeah," York said, closing his eyes and tilting his head back. He sort of felt like he was gonna throw up, and he didn't think it was entirely because of the headache. "Trust me, I know who we left behind."

* * *

Connie came back from her recon a little while later, and her whispered conversation with North was enough to drag York out of his blissfully numbed state of semi-consciousness. He tried to sit up straighter and found it took a lot less effort than he'd expected. The headache was clearing up, and it was definitely easier to breathe now. Experimentally, he braced himself against the wall and pushed to his feet.

"Well, look who's up," North said. The warmth in his voice and the relaxation in his stance were a wordless apology, an understanding. "How're you feeling?"

"Surprisingly, not so much like I just got stabbed in the chest. It's pretty great." Straightening up still seemed like it'd be pushing his luck, so York settled for a casual-looking slouch against the wall. "Any luck, Connie?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. I think the leader's on the ship with us—explains why they tried to get the fuck out of here when the Hornet went up—but this place is locked down. I couldn't get too far without their access codes. These guys are pretty paranoid about security in their empty cargo bays, if you ask me."

"Well, then," York said, pushing off from the wall, "guess we're lucky we brought an infiltration specialist. Where's the closest lock?"

Connie was looking at him a little uncertainly, darting a glance at North. "Uh. Up one deck and around the corner. Are you sure you're-"

"I'm fine. I got this." York tried a charming smile; he'd found that even behind his helmet, the general gist of it seemed to get across. Apparently Connie had also figured out how to emote through her armor, because her responding eyeroll was wonderfully evocative.

"Hey," North said, "I hate to be the one to bring down the mood, but... what exactly is the plan, here?"

York paused, his smile faltering. "Right," he said. "The plan."

Because there hadn't been much of a plan, back on the beach. There'd been the explosion, and then Wash and Carolina and South, and then the blade sneaking in from his bad side, and after that there'd mostly just been pain. Connie had dragged him out of the fray, although he didn't remember much about that part except for the annoying feeling of having to cough but not being able to muster the strength. And then North had been there, too, yelling over the wind and the rain and the gunfire that they had to get out of there. In the brief strobes of lightning, York had seen the wreckage of the Hornet, and beyond it the shadowy bulk of a bigger ship. He'd snarled out orders and they'd all staggered aboard in the midst of the confusion. Brilliant military strategy, right there.

He sighed, closing his eyes again, just for a moment, just to feel the pull of scar tissue against his eyelid. He'd never liked downtime, not with all the annoying opportunities for self-awareness and reflection that came with it, but since the training room session with Tex had landed him in the infirmary for way too fucking long, he'd come to terms with the fact that he just didn't like having to face things head-on. And right now the three bodies back on the beach seemed a hell of a lot harder to face than the whole damn Insurrection platoon on this ship.

He opened his eyes. North and Connie were looking at him, because this was kind of what he did; he stood beside Carolina, he backed her decisions, he played Prophet to her Word of God or whatever. Maybe they still thought this was all part of the plan, that he and Carolina had talked contingencies last night over a nice quiet dinner, like, "Here's what you do, York, if I get myself killed out there tomorrow, and you panic and run away and drag your friends with you. Here's what you do."

He realized he'd been quiet too long when Connie looked away, when North tilted his head to the side, and then he figured, hell, who did he think he was fooling, anyway. "The plan," he said, "is to get us all out of this alive."


	3. Return Stroke

**III. Return Stroke**

Carolina woke up feeling cold and tired and hungry, but more than anything she woke up feeling alive.

She'd been badly hurt before. She'd clawed her way back from forced unconsciousness so many times that it was almost becoming routine, but she still never got tired of that little thrill of accomplishment when she blinked up at the sky, made sure her arms and her legs all worked, and she breathed, she just breathed. She didn't often take time to feel _just good enough_, to recognize the sheer effort that went into maintaining the baseline she typically struggled to leave in the dust. So she stared up at the sky, and grinned, and lived.

And all right, yes, whatever drugs were numbing the pain were probably helping a lot with the whole euphoria thing.

"Hey, boss," said a soft voice at her side, and her smile widened, because it was _Wash_. It was Wash sitting with his knees pulled up tight to his chest, it was Wash alive and breathing and not sprawled in the sand with his chest all torn up. His armor still bore the deep grooves and gashes, but the wounds had been packed with biofoam, and his helmet was back on. He looked calm and competent, and damn, he was holding an MRE that smelled like the most incredibly wonderful thing in the universe right now.

"You bring enough to share with the class?" she said. Her voice was hoarse but strong.

"Yeah, this one's yours," he said. "Saw you moving around like you were thinking about waking up, and South's not gonna be back for a little while, so." He shrugged, held the tray out, self-conscious. "Do you think you can sit up?"

"Sure." Reminding herself sternly of her immobilized shoulder, Carolina managed to push herself into a sitting position, ignoring the little twitch of Wash's hand that was an abortive attempt to help her up. She took a sharp breath, but the pain wasn't nearly as overwhelming as she'd been expecting. "How are you doing? You weren't looking so good."

"My ears are still ringing," Wash said. "South thinks I've got a concussion on top of the whole, uh." He looked down at his chest, then shook his head and handed her the MRE, along with a pouch of water. "Yeah. And South's pretty hurt too, I think. Snuck off to go throw up once."

Carolina started a frontal assault on the dubious food, scooping it out in rapidfire bursts. "I wouldn't be surprised if she's the one with the concussion. Is that where she is now?"

Wash shook his head, watching her eat with a sort of terrified awe. Right. He hadn't seen the more mundane consequences of a speed unit-induced high before. She was vaguely aware that the painkillers were making her sort of dizzy and nauseous, but she was hungry enough not to care. After a few awkward moments, he shook himself and said, "No, I think she was looking for a working radio, some way to break the jamming signal. I think she's hoping to contact the _Mother of Invention_."

"Good plan," Carolina said, but she glanced over at the Hornet's husk, no longer smoking, and her cheery mood started to fade when she remembered that her helmet was still at the bottom of the ocean somewhere. When she remembered what else was missing. "How long was I out?"

Wash blew out a long breath. "I was out for most of it, too, although apparently South decided I was safe to wake up once I started to snore. According to my chrono, it's been about ten hours."

"Ten hours," Carolina said, experimentally. That sounded about right, judging by how much better she felt. "No word from the others?"

Wash actually looked away. "No. Sorry, boss."

"In this case, no news is probably good news. Can't imagine a reason why the bodies would be missing-" Except she could, she could imagine a dozen reasons why someone might want three armored Freelancer corpses, but she really didn't need that image in her head right now. "-so if they're not around here, they've got to be up and moving around. Maybe they're back home, and they'll be sending a recovery party once they regroup." And that was a nice image; a quick, unexpected reunion, lots of tears and professional medical care for all. The mission failure was kind of a given at this point, so even that wouldn't sting so much.

Right. Except for the part where they'd missed their first scheduled check-in with the _Mother of Invention_ almost five hours ago, so any recovery parties should've come and gone long ago.

"Yeah," Wash said. He actually sounded convinced. "They're probably okay." But his shoulders were hunched, and he kept stealing glances at her and then looking away.

"Something on your mind, Wash?"

"I, uh," He shrugged, shook his head. "I probably shouldn't have tried that EMP, you know? I figured the damage would be pretty localized if the Hornet crashed. We wouldn't be in this mess if I hadn't-"

"The guy had a grenade, Wash. Not your fault. Besides," she added, and pointed her fork at him for emphasis, "I think you've already managed to literally beat yourself up about it."

"Yeah," he said. This time he very definitely did not sound convinced. Then he straightened, and she realized he was getting a transmission on his helmet's comm link. "It's South," he said, before she could even get her hopes up, and then added, "Yeah, she's awake now. Any luck?" He paused, then said. "Got it. See you soon."

He turned to Carolina. "No joy on the radio. Whatever's putting out this jamming signal is probably what was messing with the _Mother of Invention's_ sensors in the first place."

"Right," Carolina said. Sensors had been ghosting all day over this area, screwing with their intel, but the narrow window they had to take out the leader of the Resistance had been awfully hard to pass up. She'd been cocky and pissed at Texas and pretending not to be nervous about leaving Maine behind in the infirmary instead of watching her back, and so she'd kept a lid on her doubts when the Director had briefed them on the mission. Excellent tactical decision-making all around.

A little inner voice that sounded annoyingly like a certain locksmith of her acquaintance chimed in with, _Now who's beating herself up?_

With a sigh, she shoved the empty tray aside and stumbled to her feet. "I'm gonna scout around a bit, get my bearings." She paused, automatically flicking her eyes to the place her HUD would've been if she'd been wearing her helmet, then sighed. "I guess I'll stick within visual range in case you need me. Try to get some rest."

"Sure, boss," he said, with the tone of someone who fully intended to remain hyper-vigilant and awake for the foreseeable future.

The stormy evening had given way to a relatively pleasant late morning, and the ocean seemed almost laughably nonthreatening now, cool and placid. Now that her thoughts didn't feel quite so much like they were outrunning her ability to hang onto them, now that her footsteps were steady and sure in the shifting sand, plans were finally starting to crystallize in her mind, contingencies. It seemed most reasonable to assume that York and North and Connie were alive. The alternative suggested forced inaction, sitting on her ass to wait for a rescue while someone else did all the clean-up. That was unacceptable.

They could be back aboard the _Mother of Invention_, in which case a recovery team would certainly have been sent by now, for the three sets of armor, if nothing else. Or they could be somewhere else on the planet, also cut off from home, out of range of Wash and South's armor comm links, doing... what? Proceeding with the mission? Looking for a ride off-planet?

_They could've been captured_, she thought, but that thought led a bit too easily to the continuation, _and killed_.

"A tactician's game," the Director had told her once, when he was in one of his more voluble, lecturing moods, "is an inherently dishonest one. You cannot approach the battlefield with all possibilities in your mind, arming yourself with absolutely everything you know to be true, because that is how you make yourself vulnerable. Sometimes sacrifices must be made, of the body, yes, but also of the mind.

"Sometimes you must meet an enemy on their terms and bring only the parts of you that can stomach the lies."

She allotted herself one moment, the space between one breath and the next, to think about York, just to picture the lopsided grin and the harsh new scars, the warm hands on cool skin, the drawl fading to a nervous laugh, almost shy, because this was what counted, this was what mattered. For some reason utterly beyond her comprehension, it mattered so much.

She breathed.

A distant figure was moving toward her, and even without the optical zoom her helmet would've provided, she could make out South's awkward, stumbling gait. She still had one arm pulled tight against her chest and was none too steady on her feet. Not surprising; the ten hours Carolina and Wash had spent sleeping meant South had to have been keeping watch. It took her a very long time to notice Carolina, out on the beach, and she stumbled into a new intercept trajectory.

"You're awake," South called, when she was finally within earshot.

"So are you," Carolina said. "Get back to Wash, take some meds, get your eight hours. That's an order."

South really must've been tired, because her little parting flip of a salute had only the slightest hint of a fuck-you to it. This was definitely the right call, Carolina knew that much. Stumbling into an unknown situation half-cocked would get them all killed. Ten hours or eighteen hours, they'd still be running to catch up, and hell, she'd always been good at running. She squared her shoulders and looked back out over the water.

She thought about all the parts of herself she couldn't afford to lose.


	4. Charge

**IV. Charge**

"These people ever hear of anything besides holographic locks?" York muttered. His legs were already aching from the awkward crouch he'd been in for the past fifteen minutes, and his fingers felt stiff and sore and clumsy, because hey, massive blood loss not all that long ago. He'd been trying to tease a particularly precise sequence into place, but every time he got close, he had to shy away or risk tripping an alarm, and it was starting to get beyond annoying. "I mean, at least go for a little variety! You crack one holo-lock, you've pretty much cracked 'em all."

"_Have_ you ever actually cracked a holo-lock?" Connie murmured, and wow, somebody had definitely been spending too much time around Wash. She straightened from where she'd been watching him work and went back to her nervous pacing. "Why exactly are there locks to keep things _in_ the cargo bays, anyway? That seems needlessly complicated."

"I was just thinking that," North said. He had to have a serious crick in his neck by now, the way he'd been leaning over York's shoulder this whole time, which really wasn't annoying _at all_. "What kind of cargo have they been shipping? And what's with the jamming signal?"

Connie's pacing stopped as she turned to look at North. "Yeah, I was kind of wondering about that. We haven't seen them use that sort of thing before."

York, putting maybe a little more of his attention into the conversation than the lock, just about fumbled a finger through a curve that might as well have been labeled, _Press here for instant guards and terrible death!_ He bit back a curse aimed at the inventor of the holographic lock, and a renewed throbbing took up residence in the back of his skull.

"I don't know," North said. "Keeping the _Mother of Invention_ off their backs?"

"Sure," said Connie, and she had her arms crossed like she was cold, but she was leaning forward insistently. "They seem to be awfully efficient at that. And I've gotta wonder, where exactly are our guys, anyway? Surely they've figured out the jamming signal by now."

York sighed, pushed the lock into a stable standby mode, and sank back on his haunches, rolling his wrists and flexing his too-tense hands. "They could be mounting a rescue as we speak."

"Sure," Connie said again. "They seem really motivated to make sure we're all okay."

York scratched at his visor in lieu of rubbing his temples. "Just say what you want to say, Connie."

North raised a hand. "Whoa, easy," he said. "Just keep it down, okay? This deck seems abandoned now, but we don't know if they sometimes send guards down here or what." He paused, then added, "York, you all right? You seem-"

"I'm fine," York said, and turned back to the lock. With one rough swipe, he bypassed the last level of security, risking about a dozen alarms in the process and by some miracle missing every single one. _Better lucky than good. _The door chimed. "Let's get going."

The corridor beyond had the too-clean, pristine look of an area that didn't see much foot traffic, and for the first time York wondered about interior sensors, surveillance, mass readings. With all the confusion in the evac, a few extra bodies probably wouldn't be setting off any alarms, at least not until the chaos had settled and they could start taking stock. Time was important, right now. They had to move quickly and carefully.

"Okay," he said, "let's try for radio silence from here on in. And let's not make this any bloodier than we have to—you see someone, you try to get past without 'em noticing. They see you, you knock 'em out. Our objective is to find a communications center that we can use to broadcast our position on the _Mother of Invention_'s frequency."

Connie straightened, drawing her pistol, and he heard a faint hum as she activated her hologram projector's interface. "What if we see their leader?"

"Then I guess we have a pretty great hostage," York said, and tried not to think about how that was the sort of thing the bad guys said. "Radio silence. Hand signals only. Sync?"

"Sync," North said, and Connie only hesitated a moment longer before echoing him.

The ship's layout was fairly standard, modular, lots of empty space, clearly meant for something bigger and better than shuttling around a single platoon of soldiers. It had a weirdly unfinished feeling about it, and judging by the brief glimpses he'd gotten on the beach, it was way, way undersized for the amount of cargo space they'd snuck through. Just picturing how much bigger this ship was gonna get was putting a horrible lump in the pit of his stomach. What the hell were these guys planning?

Another security console barred their progress, and he held up a hand to signal North and Connie to take up flanking positions while he worked. This lock, thankfully, was a whole lot less holographic, and a whole lot easier to hack, matching up almost exactly with the simulation he'd been practicing when this mission had come down over the wire in the first place. Fifteen seconds later, the door hissed open.

"Ah," he said. "Hi."

So, okay, maybe this deck wasn't _entirely_ deserted. So maybe one room on this deck was occupied. So maybe that one room housed, y'know, a few people. A few dozen people. A few dozen people in full armor who were slowly turning to look up at the source of the disturbance.

In the awkward silence that followed, North murmured, "I don't suppose you can just shut the door?"

"Um," York said. "That would be a no."

North exhaled. "Okay," he said, and then there was a bang that made York flinch back, and the first soldier in the room fell to a perfect headshot. The sparking hum of Connie's hologram darted out ahead of York, soaking up the first startled burst of fire, Connie herself skating in its wake, and then York was stumbling forward into cover behind a row of lockers, pulling his shotgun and downing the first hapless idiot who started around the corner after him.

The thing about fighting with only one good eye was that the whole depth-perception thing wasn't quite as bad as he'd feared. He did a lot of his fighting up close, he'd fiddled with his HUD so that it warped his perspective just enough to make distances more obvious, and when it came right down to it, a shotgun to the face was pretty damn effective, whether or not the shot was perfectly centered.

No, the thing that got him was the blind spot, and the ache that started in his good eye when it strained to compensate. There was something deeply unsettling about knowing, through experience and battle-honed training gone subliminal, that someone was coming up on your left, but not having the confirmation, the certainty. He felt like he was constantly fighting someone with Connie's armor mod, someone who could split off doubles that would fade and flicker when he looked straight at them. And the longer he fought, the harder he focused, the more his head would ache and his stomach would turn and he'd get dizzy and sick at the way his perceptions weren't quite lining up right, would never quite line up right again.

The Director claimed the new AI would help with that. York didn't see how, but at this point, he'd be willing to try anything.

The first guy fell, and York barely had time to pump the shotgun before a second one stumbled into exactly the same position and crumpled in exactly the same way. Nobody else followed, which was a sure sign that these folks were seriously well-trained—on some of his more memorable early missions, he'd taken down five or six would-be chargers before they'd gotten the message. That meant either North and Connie were making a substantial distraction, or—

Yeah, just like that, a little itch at the left side of his head. He'd always been good at trusting his instincts, so without turning his head he slammed an elbow back, caught the soldier coming up along the other side of the lockers, throwing off her aim, and that was the cue for her buddy to come up on York's right. _That_ was an easy fix, because the soldier on the left had started frantically firing her SMG. All it took was for York to step away from between the two and let them mow each other down, with another two shotgun blasts to help them on their way. Easy.

Sure. Except he was already breathing hard, and his HUD was flickering a warning about oxygen levels and the risk of a renewed hemorrhage and a collapsed lung, and right, yeah, the whole almost-dying thing was getting _really fucking old_ right now. But there was no time to complain because someone with a rifle was flanking him and he needed cover right now, right fucking now—

The guy with the rifle stumbled, then pitched forward with a knife in his back. York had just enough time to glance across the room and see Connie watching, just enough time to nod a quick thanks at her, before he had to slam himself back into cover as a sniper round whined past his exposed head.

Yeah, catching his breath was really getting to be a problem now. He was wheezing quick and shallow, and he was pretty sure the dizziness wasn't all just from overworking his good eye. Someone else was already up close, one of the guys with the fancier-looking armor, some sort of insignia on his chest. He slammed an elbow into York's gut, dancing away from the clumsy attempt at return fire, and spun back in to ram the heel of his hand under York's chin, snapping his head back and into the locker behind him with a force that sent stars across his vision.

Coughing, York managed to duck the next hit, a closed fist aimed at the side of his head, and dropped into a clearing kick to buy himself a little room. Why the hell was this guy going easy on him, why the hell was he pulling punches that should've been deadly, why the hell weren't his buddies rushing in to seize the advantage, why the hell wasn't he shooting or stabbing or, hell, launching explosives? That was seriously fucking unsettling, because it meant this guy wanted him alive, and nothing good could ever come of that.

The guy moved again, fast and quick and sure, and this time York feinted left and fired right. The edge of the shotgun blast caught the guy in the side, peppering his armor with divots and cracks that stood out in strangely perfect detail in York's vision, and then his vision wavered and blurred and his chest was aching again and he couldn't breathe, he couldn't _breathe_. He dropped his shotgun and fell to his hands and knees, his gasping drowned out by his armor's alarms. The guy staggered back, looking confused, and only _then_ did York recognize him as the Insurrectionist leader, the guy they'd been hunting down all this time.

_Hey_, he thought, fuzzily, _what do you know. Mission accomplished_.

The leader recovered quickly enough, slamming York back against the lockers, keeping one hand tight around his throat-and, okay, points for style, but choking him seemed redundant at this point-and bringing a pistol up with his other hand, jamming it under York's chin. "Hey, assholes!" he yelled. "Drop your fucking weapons or I blow his head off."

Blearily, York wrapped a hand around the leader's arm, tried to use it to leverage himself a little more wiggle room so he could figure out where the heck the others were. Connie wasn't far away, standing stock-still with her back to a wall, a small pile of bodies at her feet, two bloodied knives in her hands.

"Hey, I hear you," called North, and how the hell had he actually found time to clamber up _on top_ of a row of lockers? He very slowly and carefully set down his sniper, raising his hands. "No need to do anything rash, okay? Don't hurt him. I'm coming down."

"So just fucking do it," the leader snarled, and York's attention snapped back to him when he felt the grip around his throat slacken a little. The shotgun blast had done more damage than he'd thought, judging by the blood trickling down the guy's side.

Slowly but steadily, his breath was coming back, and York was a firm believer in his very own personal motto that there wasn't a hopeless situation out there that couldn't be improved with a little witty banter, so he croaked, "Hey, it was worth a shot. Can't blame us for trying."

He saw the guy's finger tighten on the trigger of his pistol, and had a panicked moment in which he revised said personal motto to include an exception for times when _someone had a fucking gun to his throat_, but the leader got himself back under control, eased off the trigger again. "You just killed a lot of my friends," he hissed, instead. "I'd watch your mouth."

And just for a second, York let himself think about Wash, about South, about Carolina. Just for a second, he pictured the way it would go down: he'd brace himself against the locker behind him, slam his right foot into the leader's injured side, switch his grip on the leader's arm into a grab and drag the pistol out of range, slam his other fist into the elbow, snap it so the leader was pointing his own pistol to his own head, reach over and pull the trigger—

York did none of those things, because he could see North hopping to the ground, unarmed, and because he could see Connie dropping her own weapons, stepping over the bodies surrounding her with hands held palm-out, and because he'd kinda promised them they were all gonna make it out of here alive. So, yeah, he did none of those things. But just for a second, he thought about them, and just for a second, they felt _really fucking good_ to think about.

"Fuck," the leader muttered. "Throw 'em in the brig for now. We'll deal with them later." He shoved York into the hands of two particularly large and burly guys with guns. York considered trying his winning smile and clever banter on them, but he was still a little out of breath, and so he settled for sketching a rueful shrug when North and Connie jogged up to join him.

"Uh," said one of the guards. "The brig's not done yet. Sir."

The leader made a very small sound that nonetheless managed to communicate infinite frustration and bottled-up rage. One of his hands was pressed to the wound in his side. "Then _find_ somewhere secure to put them."

"How the hell'd they get on board, anyway?" one of the guards muttered, and hey, with an opening like that, York couldn't resist.

"I'd watch your back," he murmured. "What makes you think we're the only ones?"

A hand clamped down viselike on his shoulder, but the leader had heard his little parting shot, judging by the way he started barking out orders as soon as their group had turned away. North, walking next to York, blew out a faint breath of a laugh. "You just don't know when to keep your mouth shut, do you?"

"It's part of my undeniable charm," York said, and Connie snorted, and for a second he could just about believe everything was gonna be okay.


	5. Flashpoint

**V. Flashpoint**

Another storm started blowing in late that afternoon, tall clouds rumbling just off the coast. Carolina's pacing had finally reached the point where it was annoying even her, so she sat on the beach and just watched the lightning flicker and flare. She'd always been good with downtime, with filling the gaps in her schedule. She revised her mental report of the entire incident ten or twelve times. She scheduled a recovery plan for her shoulder wound, then created a more optimistic version on the off-chance she hadn't fractured the bone as badly as she feared.

"Wow," South said, coming up behind her. Even without turning, Carolina could tell she was more steady on her feet. "That looks really weird."

Carolina tapped on the faceplate of the helmet she'd salvaged from the pilot of the downed Hornet; it was a bit too big, it wobbled around because the seals didn't match the rest of her armor, and the exterior was singed and bore a couple of ominous red stains. "Better than having to worry about a bullet to the head. Besides, it's got an internal power pack. I managed to get a HUD popped up a couple hours ago. Got it patched into our frequency."

South hesitated, then crouched down beside her in the sand. "It looks ridiculous. If Wash hadn't warned me, I'd have thought you were just some asshole. Guess it's easy to forget your helmet's not your face, sometimes."

"Wow," Carolina said. "That speaks volumes about our mental well-being, doesn't it?"

South snorted a laugh. "I don't think any of us took this job because we were particularly well-adjusted. Just a bunch of fucked-up overachiever SPARTAN wannabes. Go, Project Freelancer." She subsided into silence for a long moment, watching the lightning, then added, "North didn't even want to do this, y'know. He said nothing good ever came from projects like this, just wanted to leave it be. You know that?"

Carolina, who had read every Freelancer's personnel report until it felt burned permanently into her memory, said, "Yeah, I know."

Settling back on her haunches, South picked at a damaged bit of armor on one of her fingers. "I talked him into it, because, well, we're pretty kickass as a team, and I knew if the project was run by some scientist dickwad he wouldn't be able to resist twins. Built-in control variables, y'know? Fucking bullshit." She looked up, then; Carolina could feel the weight of her gaze without turning around. "How about you, boss? Why'd you join Freelancer? Figured you'd be out on the front lines, kicking ass and taking names, not skulking around with us assholes."

Carolina exhaled, then pushed herself to her feet and started back toward their makeshift camp. "Get ready to move, South."

"Move?" South scrambled up beside her, practically jogging to keep pace. "Move where? What are we doing?"

A small indicator had started blinking in the corner of Carolina's HUD. She waved to Wash, who was packing up the last of their camp, and waited for him to jog up beside them. "We're waiting."

"Waiting? For what?"

Carolina tilted her head back, watched as her HUD highlighted a speck in the sky, barely visible now but getting bigger and bigger. "We're not the only ones with an interest in recovering armor from dead Freelancers. Once they figured out our guys weren't coming, I didn't think they could resist. Looks like the carrion bird's finally circling."

"Hah," South said, and drew her pistol. "And here I was thinking I wouldn't get another shot at those pieces of shit."

Wash was following her gaze. "Looks like a Pelican to me. You sure that's not the cavalry coming to the rescue?"

Carolina tapped her helmet again. "The HUD in this thing paints it as friendly, so I'm thinking no. It's probably from that big crate of a ship they had landed here before."

South's voice was practically vibrating with excitement. "You're thinking the others are on that ship."

Carolina was grinning, even as she waved them back to set up their ambush, because hell, it was about time something started going right. "I'm thinking it's worth a shot."

"Even assuming they're just sending down a skeleton team to look for the bodies, that's still a good dozen soldiers," Wash pointed out. "Plus a pilot and co-pilot."

"Hey, nothing to worry about," South said. "We're the defenders, and we've got surprise on our hands. They're expecting corpses."

"They're half-right," Wash said, and when Carolina glanced over she caught him tracing a finger over the deep gash in his armor's chestplate. He looked up at her, then shook himself, straightening. "Okay, boss. Call it."

Carolina backed up a couple steps. The borrowed helmet's HUD was bare-bones, but it could still make simple trajectory estimations. "They're coming down next to the Hornet. Plenty of cover out there. The key is that we don't want them to be able to call for help, so we're going to do this _quietly_."

"Why does she always look at me when she says that?" South muttered.

"They're going to send out search parties," Carolina said, watching as her HUD made recalculations for the Pelican's trajectory, placing it a few meters further east than the initial guess. She waved the others further into cover. "Standard recon. They know we went down close to the Hornet, so they'll likely spiral out from there."

"Oh, no. You're not gonna ask me to lie out there as bait, are you?"

It felt so good to be doing something, _anything_, after nearly a full day of forced inaction, that Carolina couldn't hide the grin in her voice. "Tempting, Wash, but no. We should be able to take them out once they split up. Quick kills, nothing flashy, nothing loud enough for them to panic. Wash, there's a perch halfway up that little hill on our six. You see it?"

He turned, then said, "Got it, boss."

"Good. Lines of sight up there are great, and if you stay low you shouldn't be spotted. We need eyes on this one."

He looked past her for a moment, up toward where the Pelican was starting to become visible to the unaided eye, then snapped his attention back to her. "Got it, boss," he said, and jogged to his post. There was just enough relief in his voice that she knew keeping him on the sidelines would be a good call, at least this time around.

South was watching Carolina, and when she spoke it was with a faint hint of admiration in her voice. "When Wash told me you'd been walking up and down the beach all day, I figured you had to be up to something."

"If all else fails, I planted a handful of mines further up the beach. Positions should be mapped on your HUDs."

Wash's voice came in clear over the helmet's radio. "No stone left unturned?"

"Or unexploded," South said. "Where do you want me, boss?"

"Three o'clock, behind that little copse of trees, other side of the Hornet. Wash has better eyes on you out there. And remember," she added, as South sprinted to her destination, "wait for my signal. We don't want to tip our hand."

"Yeah, I know, you can quit channelling North anytime now," South called, and the little snarl in her voice was completely outweighed by the sheer buoying hope that her use of her brother's name implied. This wasn't a failed mission, Carolina thought, not anymore. This was a rescue.

She pushed herself to the edge of her cover, a long, curved piece of metal blasted from the Hornet explosion, and waited. Her plasma rifles were with her helmet at the bottom of the ocean, which certainly wasn't ideal, and sure, one arm was essentially immobilized, but she'd borrowed a Magnum from Wash, her feet were fast and sure, her heart was pounding strong and slow, and her team was standing ready. That was all she needed. That was all she'd ever needed.

"On my mark," she said, as the whine of the Pelican's engines reverberated through her chest. "Quick and quiet, people."

It took less than an hour to secure the dropship.

Most of that time was spent waiting, as excitement gave way to tense anticipation. The comm channel in Carolina's helmet had been registering chatter since the team disembarked, and she patched through the relevant information to Wash so he could coordinate their attacks with periods of planned radio silence. In return, he relayed coordinates in a quiet, even tone, painted enemies on their HUDs, gave careful recommendations on lines-of-sight-he didn't quite have North's eye at this range, but he'd always had a good feel for tactics, especially when he wasn't in the thick of things. South moved quick and quiet, precise, and the few times Carolina saw her shift from cover, it was with an elastic snap to her motions, quick and economical. She didn't get cocky, not that Carolina could see, and that in and of itself was the mirror of Wash's new, unspoken caution. They needed this to go right. They needed something to go right.

The search party took longer to reach Carolina's side of the Hornet, combing out toward the beach in cautious three-person teams. "Six headed for you, boss, on your ten and two," Wash said, in her ear. "You'll have to commit in five. They'll be out of sight of the main group in three, two, one-"

Carolina breathed.

The speed unit was meant for sustained bursts, but she'd found that whenever she was cut off from the hardline to command, it was easiest to power it up only for short clips, transition states, those pesky dragging moments between one footstep and the next. She'd set the unit to automatically activate and deactivate with each footfall, giving her the strange, dizzying sensation of stop-motion, of strobelights. It made her damn near impossible to hit.

The first trooper around her cover saw her immediately, but only stared in bafflement at what must've looked like some sort of bizarre patchwork monster, mismatched helmet and warped, bloodied armor, jerkily staggering up at him.

She caught him across the visor with the butt of her Magnum, accelerated, slammed his staggering body back with a kick into his two friends. She whirled in time to see the second trio round the corner, and only _then_ did she activate the speed unit full-burst, dodging in among their comically slow-moving reaction. Their weapons were barely raised even as she hit and slammed and snapped. The bad right arm slowed her up once, when she forgot herself and reached to throw a punch with her unarmed hand, but the armor kept her from moving it too much, and she had time enough to transfer the momentum to an inelegant but effective headbutt, followed by a sweeping kick.

It was the work of a moment to move back to the original three soldiers and more permanently incapacitate them, and then she was dragging herself back into cover, breathing hard, breathing fast, watching the way the distant lightning flickered and flared around her before she thought to deactivate the speed unit. She was grinning behind the helmet. No alarm sounded.

"Whoa," Wash said, then went back to coordinating South's elimination of the final search party. Carolina held position, though she was already feeling the heightened-metabolism effects of the speed unit, and the ration bar she'd crammed in her supplies was calling her name. The pilot and co-pilot were likely still aboard the dropship, though, and that meant the potential for a tricky fight in close quarters. The more time they could buy on that, the better.

"Okay, ready to go," South said, sounding winded. "No alarms?"

"No alarms," Carolina confirmed, and started moving up, cautiously, on the dropship's position.

"You okay, South?" Wash said, and when she looked toward his vantage point, she could see him picking his way down the hill, sticking to cover. "I saw that one guy-"

"Fucker panicked, tripped over his own feet, landed on me," South said, and coughed. "I'm gonna need to wrap these damn ribs en route."

"Let's worry about that once we're actually en route," Carolina said. "Final count, Wash?"

"Four teams of three," he said. "Shouldn't be too many left on the dropship."

Carolina came up alongside the dropship, pressing in close. "Pilot's got a direct line in to their command," she said. "We've gotta do this fast, or he'll get word out. How long before our friends out here are missed, Wash?"

"About thirty seconds," he said, and then he was coming up beside her, flattening his back against the bulk of the Pelican.

"Cutting it a little close," South said. She was half-hunched over, but still moving well, quick and efficient as she pushed in on the opposite side of the Pelican's rear entrance. "Call it."

In lieu of response, Carolina opened the Insurrectionist comm channel. "We've retrieved the objective," she said.

The pilot's voice came in. "Shit, already? All three suits of armor?"

"Looks like their command bugged out," Carolina said, and tried to keep her voice from shaking, because _three suits of armor_ meant they weren't expecting to find six bodies here, and maybe, just maybe, that meant they knew where the other three were. "We're good to go, here. You want to give us a hand?"

The rear hatch was opening, and Wash was moving into position, raising his rifle. Carolina had time to hear the pilot say, "Wait, hang on, who is this?" before Wash stepped out of cover and delivered a quick, precise burst of fire. The pilot gave a choked gasp, then crumpled.

South and Wash jumped aboard the ship, but the co-pilot's chair was empty-probably went out to rubberneck at the prospect of three dead Freelancers, Carolina figured. With one last look back toward the approaching storm, she jumped in behind the others.

"Clear," Wash said, unnecessarily, and they stood for a moment in silence, taking in their conquest.

"Never thought I'd say it," South said, "but I'm kinda missing Four-Seven's shit right now."

Carolina sighed and pushed past her to the pilot's seat, closing the rear hatch and starting the pre-flight checks. She'd rated as an acceptably mediocre pilot, good enough to play backup, but she'd be noticeably shaky on approach and landing with this thing. Couldn't be helped.

There was a clank from behind her, and she half-turned to see South dragging off her chestplate, still hunched and breathing hard. Wash was hovering awkwardly at her side, and Carolina watched long enough to be sure South hadn't been hiding any worse injuries than a few cracked ribs, then turned back to the controls.

She typed in the quick code that indicated intermittent communications failure-with the jamming signal that had been blocking communications with the _Mother of Invention_, surely that wasn't much of a stretch-and requested the quickest course to dock. Their destination wasn't far, mere minutes away. On some level she'd suspected the Insurrectionists hadn't gone far, but she still felt shaky with relief at the confirmation. Standard protocol required a voice-check identification, and she and Wash dug through their helmet recordings to cobble together a disjointed and staticky, "Confirmed" from the deceased pilot.

"I can't believe that worked," Wash said, in a small, dazed voice.

"Hah," South said, and sucked in a breath at some too-sharp motion. "Don't kid yourself. We're not in the clear yet."

"It's a start," Wash said, sounding a little hurt. "It's a chance. That's all we ever wanted."

"Well, great," South said. "Because that's all we've got. A chance. Trojan Horse only worked because they had a fuckton of soldiers inside."

"With the element of surprise-"

"I don't know where you learned math, Wash, but three soldiers does not actually constitute a fuckton."

"Stow the chatter," Carolina said. "South, get yourself patched up. Wash, get what you can from the computer. We're gonna need every advantage, and if we can bust through this jamming signal and reach the _Mother of Invention_-"

"Right, boss."

Pre-flight check complete. Carolina took a breath, steeled herself, and fired up the engines, punching through the clouds, leaving the snarls of lightning and echoes of thunder far, far below.


	6. Strike

**VI. Strike**

York was pretty convinced of two things. The first was that North had a superpower. The second was that North's superpower was the ability to radiate concern through solid bulkheads.

Give the Insurrectionists credit, they knew how to lock up prisoners. Everyone in their own little makeshift cells, hastily but unscientifically soundproofed by the addition of a large guard who'd snarl any time one of them tried to communicate. Also, oh yes, no armor. That last part was incredibly disconcerting.

He'd made a token attempt to argue that he still needed his healing unit, but all that had done was get everyone excited about the healing unit, which they promptly carted off with the rest of his armor, so, uh. Maybe not a net win. He felt weird and vulnerable and _small_ in the armor's ridiculous undersuit, although he was consoling himself with the fact that at least it'd be easier to sleep in. The damn armor always threw his neck out.

Sure. Easier to sleep in. Except for the part where now he couldn't really pretend the whole stab wound thing hadn't happened, because there was a big gash in his undersuit and the skin beneath wasn't fully healed yet, all weird and puckered and, like, _oozy_. He felt vaguely ill every time he glanced down at it, but also vaguely compelled to keep glancing down at it, which wasn't helping a whole lot, so mostly he just sort of curled on his side and focused on his breathing and tried to ignore North's death-ray of caring coming from the next cell over.

He knew exactly where they'd put North, because every hour or so he'd work up the courage to call, "You alive in there?" and York would mumble back a cheery, "Yup," and the guard would glare at them both and snarl at them to be quiet.

He was pretty sure Connie was either in a different part of the ship or being quiet and sneaky in a nearby cell. Or, y'know. Pretending she had no idea who these two idiots were, honest.

They'd taken her armor at the same time as theirs. He'd been surprised to notice a deep gash on her arm that had obviously happened back on the beach-she'd never said a word-and then he'd been even more surprised to be reminded of how _tiny_ she was. Like, everyone looked short next to North, but without her armor Connie just seemed really fucking small and really fucking young, and he was having a hard time reconciling that image with the knowledge of how viciously she fought, with the assortment of black-ops assignments he knew to be in her personnel record.

_Still waters run deep_, he thought sagely, and damn, he really must be getting tired if that seemed like a deep and profound insight into her character.

His eyes kept drifting shut on their own, and then the hardness of the deck below him would sink in and he'd jolt awake, his heart slamming against his ribs, which, y'know. Hurt a lot. He was still having trouble catching his breath, although to be fair, he had been doing a lot of running, lately. He curled into a tighter ball on the ground and tried to work out a nice, nonthreatening daydream to escape into. You know. Something that didn't involve missing teammates or missing armor or missing anything.

"Hey-" North called.

"Yes," the guard snarled. "Yes, he's still alive. I promise you'll be the first to know if he dies, because you can safely assume that I will kill you next. Okay?"

"That seems fair, man," York said. It came out as sort of a wheezy mumble that ended in a coughing fit, which probably wasn't terribly reassuring. He rested his forehead against the cool deckplates and went back to just focusing, like, ninety percent of his attention on breathing.

"Hey," said North, "the guy's pretty hurt. Just let me take a look at him."

"You a doctor?" the guard asked, with a hint of interest.

"Well, no," North said, and now there was a sliver of steel in his voice. "What he really needs is that healing unit you guys took from him."

"Oh, you mean the one in his armor? The armor he wore to kill a bunch of my friends?" The guard seemed to be forgetting that his primary role was to keep them from talking, because hey, he obviously had all this sarcasm bottled up for a rainy day. "Yeah, somehow I don't feel particularly inclined to make him more comfortable. Not my problem."

"If he dies," North said, and York made a faint noise of protest at that because, hey, melodramatic much? "you don't think it'll become your problem?"

York heard the guard shift a little closer, then snort. "Nah, he's, like, moving around and talking and shit. He's fine."

Before North could come up with a retort, York cut in with, "Connie, you wanna weigh in on this?"

And, okay, his voice was pretty weak, but if she was anywhere in the vicinity, she had to have heard that, and she'd definitely have responded, even if only with an exasperated sigh. Which meant she wasn't in the vicinity, which meant... something. He was having trouble focusing again, thoughts chasing each other down and down into sleep, and again the hard floor jolting him back to consciousness, and then the hammering of his heart, and then the slow, steady lull of his blurring thoughts.

North called out again, and this time York didn't answer, because he was drifting somewhere pleasantly far away, he was warm and nervous and _happy_, breathing fast, tracing his fingers across old scars and tight, corded muscle, curling them in bright hair, and when Carolina smiled it was like the end of the world in the best possible way-

"York, c'mon, stay with me."

And, okay, that wasn't something they'd ever tried, but North was a good-looking guy, and, like, maybe if they were all feeling a little adventurous-

"_York_."

York jolted awake again, coughing, and this time there was a warm hand on his shoulder, and somewhere beyond his wheezing he caught a hint of another voice, and then North said, "Yeah, back on the beach. The healing unit kept him alive, but I think the last fight really took it out of him, and now-"

York rolled onto his back, still panting for breath. "Where's our buddy?" he said, once he was pretty sure he was done with the whole hacking-up-a-lung thing, and North nodded over to a big heap of guard on the ground. Said heap of guard looked very, very dead. "Whoa. Remind me not to forget to answer next time you call."

"Wasn't me," said North. He had a weird, fixed expression on his face, a smile that did nothing to hide the deepening worry-lines around his eyes. "Rescue party's here."

York craned his neck, and the name on his lips faded when his reeling brain finally recognized the figure standing over them. "_Texas_?"

"Heard you guys were in some trouble," Tex said, and she seemed so _alien_ in her sleek, undamaged armor, untarnished steel and chrome. He realized he'd never seen her face, and then he realized, more slowly, that he'd never even questioned that before. "I was in the neighborhood, figured I'd stop by to help out."

Before York could say another word, Connie backed into the cell. She was still out of armor, but she had a Magnum in one hand and had apparently taken the time to apply biofoam to the wound on her arm. "Nobody's sounded the alarm. I think we're good."

"Uh," said York, then paused, because he wasn't entirely sure where to start, and settled for a weak, "I don't really understand what's happening right now."

"Tex doesn't know where the others are, either," North said. "They never reported in. But the _Mother of Invention_ intercepted communications about three Freelancer prisoners, and hey. Here's the cavalry."

"Wyoming and Florida are going for the armor," Tex said, but York's brain was still hung up on _never reported in_, because what the hell did that mean, what the hell could that possibly mean-

The images were stunningly vivid, the memories clear as a film reel, playing over and over in excruciating detail. South hitting the wall and crumpling. Wash falling amid that shocking spray of blood. And Carolina tumbling limp and unmoving into the water...

"I think I'm going to be sick," York mumbled, but North's hand shifted from his shoulder to his arm, half-dragged him to his feet, and then everything was just sort of spinning except that solid grip, and he clutched at it, shaking.

"York?" That was Connie, leaning in close, and then she looked past him to North, her brows furrowed. "I don't like this. He needs medical attention."

"That's the plan," Tex said. "Can he walk?"

"Sure," North said.

"Yeah," York said, because North had said it with such certainty that it would've been impolite to disagree. "Yeah, just... need a minute, here."

"We don't have a minute," Tex said. "Wyoming says he and Florida have got the armor, but there are way too fucking many people on this ship, and they've got to have noticed us by now. We're getting out of here. Now."

"Yeah," York said, again, because what else could he say to that, and then North was moving, supporting him as he stumbled along in Tex's wake. Connie took their six, and York half-turned to see her take down a trio of guards, one-two-three, before Tex even seemed aware of their presence.

They rounded a corner, once, to find six soldiers waiting, and then Tex just sort of _wasn't there_, and York remembered what it'd been like to fight her, even when she'd been pulling her punches on the training room floor. She moved quick and precise and careful, all economy of motion and sheer ridiculous, uncaring skill. _Virtuoso_ seemed like a good descriptor. _Really fucking scary _was another.

The six soldiers fell. Tex didn't. "Let's move," she said, then, "Fuck."

"Care to share with the class?" Connie called.

Tex hesitated, then swung left down the next corridor. "Wyoming says they've found our escape pod. Change of plans. We're going to meet them in the landing bay and hitch a ride from there."

"That sounds tricky," York said. His voice was a lot stronger, now, and he wasn't leaning on North nearly as much. Adrenaline was a hell of a drug.

"Never said it'd be easy," said Tex.

"Hey, so," York said, ignoring North's warning squeeze of his arm. "One question. You said you came after us because you intercepted a communication?"

"Yup," said Tex.

"So what the hell were you doing before that? It has to have been, like, a day at least since the fight on the beach. Where were you guys?" North's hand on his arm was like a vise, now.

"You said one question," Tex said. "That's three. At least."

"Yeah, Tex," Connie chimed in. "Where were you guys?"

"Wow, I don't think I've ever heard that particular pronunciation of the words 'thank you for saving my life' before," Tex said, and swung around a corner into five more Insurrectionists, which she dispatched as effortlessly as the first six, with the help of a well-placed headshot from Connie that made York's ears ache. "C'mon. Keep moving."

"No, look," York said, and that finally pushed North to mutter, "Not _now_, York!", but fuck it, he was tired and he ached all over and the same fucking images just kept playing across his mind. "Did you even go back down there? Did you even look for them?" Something sharp twinged in his chest and darkness was ringing his vision, and he swallowed hard, swaying on his feet, because passing out right now would probably undermine the point he was trying to make.

Tex wheeled around, still stalking backwards, her voice deceptively mild. "You really want to have this conversation in enemy territory, York? We're all here because you made the brilliant tactical call of charging half-cocked onto an Insurrectionist ship. You're really fucking lucky we decided to rescue you at all."

"I'm sure all that Project Freelancer armor in enemy hands had absolutely nothing to do with this rescue mission," Connie murmured, and North's hand tightened around York's arm again, this time in reaction.

Tex stopped in her tracks, took a step toward them, and York stumbled back automatically, felt North move with him. "Stow the chatter. Let's keep moving."

A door behind her opened. York's warning shout died in his throat as she whirled, slipped into cloak, brought her weapons to bear.

And didn't fire.

Three figures in armor, and it was the helmet on one that kept drawing his eye, a mismatched white over blue-green. His brain was skipping over the image, trying to make sense of it, and then South said, in a low voice, "Holy _fuck_." Wash stepped out from behind them, rifle in hand, and the jagged tear in his armor was what made it real, was what snapped it from some pleasant daydream. York was breathing _way too fucking fast_, because the figure in blue-green armor was just standing there with her wrong helmet and her crumpled shoulder guard, and she was just _standing _there, and _she_ was just standing there-

"Carolina?" he said, thickly.

"We've got to keep moving," Tex said from somewhere very far away.

The way the unfamiliar helmet snapped to focus on Tex, the frustration and rage that set the shoulders, _that_ was pure Carolina. But after a moment she turned back to him, cocked her head to one side, and she said, in a voice that was soft and mild and gave away absolutely nothing, "Guess we're here to rescue you."

North's grip on York's arm had slackened the second South spoke up, but now it tightened again, and York became aware that he was in the process of slowly sliding to the floor. Carolina stepped forward. He was breathing so fast, he wanted to say something, he wanted to say anything, but his thoughts were drifting again, chasing each other down the rabbit-hole. North said something in a sharp tone, and then the floor was a whole lot closer and York's chest was burning, but that was okay, that burning seemed right, maybe, because something inside him sure as hell felt like it had just burst into flame.


	7. Echo

**VII. Echo**

The debrief was one of the single most frustrating encounters of Carolina's life.

The Director wouldn't look at her, staring out over his monitors and consoles with his hands clasped behind his back. She _knew_ the mission had failed, she _knew _the leader had gotten away, she _knew _it had taken the better part of a day to retrieve her missing helmet and weapons from under the water. She wasn't expecting a fucking commendation out of this.

But she wouldn't have said no to an apology.

She spoke maybe a little more plainly than she should have. She asked, again and again, where the hell the _Mother of Invention_ had been during that day, why they'd held off on their rescue mission until it was nearly too late. How the hell the jamming signal had so conveniently disappeared just in time for them to catch the transmission about three Freelancer prisoners. The Director drawled calming, patronizing phrases, barbed half-compliments, "You did as well as could be expected of you, Carolina. Certain aspects of this mission were beyond your need to know."

She remembered, again, what he'd said about bringing only the pieces of you into battle that could stomach the lies. She wondered how often he'd twisted and fragmented himself, becoming what he was.

In the end, she settled for snapping out, "You can't run a war if you don't trust your own damn team, _sir_," and then she was stalking out the door, breathing hard, and for a moment she wished she was wearing her armor so she could just hit something, just _hit_ something, feel it crumple beneath her fist.

York was propping up the wall in the corridor outside, and she came up short beside him. Even out of armor, he looked a hell of a lot better than he had on the Insurrectionist ship, no more of that worrying tinge of blue around his lips, although his casual lean looked to be about half for cool-guy effect and half for keeping himself on his feet. She made an effort to soften her tone, although the words still came out a little harsher than she'd intended. "I thought you were still in the infirmary."

He shrugged. "They're letting me out-"

"-tomorrow," she finished, and he grinned, and it was the easiest thing in the world to smile back. She wanted... she wasn't sure what she wanted. She wanted to shout at him, to find out just what the hell he'd been thinking, storming the Insurrectionist ship half-dead and with limited backup. She wanted to pin him against the bulkhead behind him, because he was the single most unapologetically _reactive _partner she'd ever had, because one rough kiss would be all it'd take for him to shudder against her, one roll of her hips would drag out that helpless little throaty groan-

"I could say the same thing to you," he said, apparently oblivious to the turn her thoughts had taken. "How's the shoulder?"

She shrugged it by way of demonstration. "Good. Didn't take much to patch it up."

They'd all spent some time in the infirmary, including Wyoming and Florida, who'd run into trouble meeting them at the landing bay. Well. All except North, who'd made it through the entire incident with nothing more than scrapes and bruises. And Tex, of course.

_Of course_.

He pushed off from the wall. "I'm headed to the mess for a late-night snack. You game?"

She fell into step beside him. "Late-night?" It was just past ship's noon.

He shrugged. "It's space. It's always late-night." And, yeah, that was definitely a suggestive little waggle to his eyebrows. Maybe not so oblivious after all.

"Real subtle, York."

"I thought it was a good line." His grin faltered, faded a little. "Besides, uh. I guess they're going to be implanting me with that AI in a couple of days. Kind of want to, you know. Take advantage of single-occupancy in here." He tapped a finger against the side of his head.

"Yeah," Carolina said. "That'll be... different."

"Different's a word."

She paused mid-step, waited for him to notice and turn back toward her. "York, how did your debrief go?"

He shrugged, mock-casual. "I pulled the Counselor instead of the Director, so it was pretty much like disappointing a really terrifying teddy bear."

"_York_."

He exhaled, scrubbed a hand back through his hair. "Okay, so I got a little mad. I'm still a little mad. They didn't even go down to look for you three. It smells like a setup, you know? Internal's been talking to Wash. Maybe they saw the opportunity once we were aboard the ship to send Tex in to spy on us, maybe they suspected something. I don't know. Maybe it was just another one of his experiments."

"The transmissions," Carolina said, and when he glanced up at her, she clarified. "There've been some suspicious transmissions coming from inside the ship. That's why Internal's in a bit of a panic. I guess they just wanted to confirm nobody was trying to desert."

York was staring at her, brow furrowed. "That doesn't bother you? That they mistrust us this much? That they'd suspect us of- of _that_?"

Carolina wanted to snarl at him, wanted to say, _Give me a little fucking credit for critical thinking, York_. But she was thinking again about the Director, about the cold necessities of war, about the parts of yourself you split off to save. "They didn't arrest any of us, right? That means we're in the clear."

"That's not the point."

"Look," she said, and lowered her voice to a whisper so suddenly he flinched. "You can't go around talking about this kind of stuff like it's the weather, York. Trust works both ways. We knew what we were getting into when we signed on. You want to keep your spot on that leaderboard, you have to trust the Director. You have to trust him."

York raised his hands, opened his mouth like he was about to say something, then subsided, blowing out a frustrated breath. "No," he said, "I really don't."

"Then trust me," Carolina said, quickly, because it was starting to sink in that they were just standing around in the hallway, that anyone could walk by and hear this, report it back to the Director. "You're my team. I'll get you through this. I brought us all back alive. I always do."

That brought him up short, and then he was just staring at her, breathing hard, the scars on his face standing out like beacons against his lingering pallor. "Yeah," he said, at last, and rubbed at his face with the palm of his hand. "Yeah. If anyone can, it's you."

She turned on her heel, started toward the training room instead of the mess hall, because right now she really, _really_ needed to hit something. After a moment, he followed, soft footsteps echoing hers, and the sound was the distant rumble of thunder, the clouds roiling above placid waters, the distant glimmer of lightning on the horizon.

She thought about his smile. She thought about drowning on dry land. She thought about fracturing, splintering, about all the parts of them that needed saving.

"We'll be okay," she said, and almost believed it.


End file.
